Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
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| Textual Feature | Appearance |
|---|---|
| passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
| passage deleted by overwritten added letters | |
| passage added above the line | passage with added text above |
| passage added on the line | passage with added text inline |
| passage added in the margin | passage with text added in margin |
| handwritten addition to a typewritten letter | typed passage with added handwritten text |
| missing or unreadable text | missing text noted with "[illegible]" |
| uncertain transcriptions | word[?] |
| notes written by someone other than Willa Cather | Note in another's hand |
| printed letterhead text | printed text |
| text printed on postcards, envelopes, etc. | printed text |
| text of date and place stamps | stamped text |
| passage written by Cather on separate enclosure. | written text |
REFERRED TO _____
AUG 30 1922
ANSWERED BY k 8/30
FILED BY _____ Grand Manan2 August 26 Dear Mr. Knopf1:
This is fine news3 you write me, that you are going to make a second printing4. Lord, I hope you won't get stuck with it! Such a pledge of faith ought to impress the booksellers—it surely impresses me.
Here is a list of the changes I would like made in the text in the second
third printing. Will you please manage to get me proofs of
the pages on which changes changes occur? In making
the corrections the printers are apt to make even more errors.
The books I asked for, including the copy of "April Twilights5" have arrived safely.
Please ask your secretary to get me one dozen copies of Dorothy Canfield's6 review7 when it8 appears, and a dozen of Sinclair Lewis'9 review10, and to hold them11 at your office for me until my return to town12. The mail boat comes here2 only three times a week, and Customs make an awful bother. It's a glorious place to work, though, and I've got on very well.
I will be back in New York12 near the middle of September—probably by the 18th or 19th and will fall to autographing your first edition at once.
FaithfullyWilla CatherIs the book out on the market13 yet? I have a letter from Michigan14 declaring it was seen in a book shop
there.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2535.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2535
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Alfred A. Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- August 26 [1922]
- Place letter was written
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- Cather-Knopf Correspondence, The Dobkin Family Collection of Feminism, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
On 21 August 1922 Knopf wrote that to demonstrate his faith in One of Ours, he had ordered a second printing of 10,000 copies, for a total of 25,000 copies. He also apologized for the printers' errors.
Fisher compared reading One of Ours (1922) to seeing "an eagle soar up through all this pettiness, on broad sure wings, carrying us in spirit with her to the heights."
Lewis described One of Ours (1922) as "disappointing" and "inferior" to Cather's other novels.
The official publication date was 8 September 1922.
Person Annotations
Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York
publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from
Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc.,
in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their
son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher
beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and
One of Ours (1922), partly because she was
dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also
because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what
she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing
the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as
well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence
testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an
important personal friendship.
Fisher, Dorothy Canfield (1879-1958). American novelist; educational
and social reformer. Dorothy Canfield and Willa Cather became
friends in 1891 at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where Canfield's
father, James Canfield, had come to serve as Chancellor. The family moved to
Columbus, OH, in 1895 when James Canfield assumed the presidency of Ohio
State University, from which Dorothy graduated in 1899. She then followed
her father to New York City, where he became Librarian of Columbia
University, and she pursued graduate study in Romance Languages at the
University of Paris and Columbia, from which she earned a PhD in 1904. On
Cather’s first trip to Europe, she spent time in France and England with
Canfield, including an awkward visit to the home of poet A.E. Housman.
Cather derived the central character of “The Profile” (1907) from Canfield’s
friend Evelyn Osborne, whom Cather had met in Europe. Cather and Canfield
became estranged for more than a decade because Canfield objected to the
story’s planned inclusion in The Troll Garden (1905).
Canfield married John Redwood Fisher in 1907, and their primary residence
was Arlington, VT. Canfield Fisher had spent 1916-1918 in France engaging in
war relief work, and Cather’s consultation with her about the accuracy of
her depiction of wartime France in One of Ours (1922)
led them to reconcile. In 1925 Canfield Fisher became a founding member of
the Book of the Month Club selection committee. She published her novels
(most of them very popular) under the name Dorothy Canfield but her various
nonfiction works as Dorothy Canfield Fisher.
Lewis, Sinclair (1885-1951). American novelist. Born
in Sauke Centre, MN, Sinclair Lewis graduated from Yale University in 1908.
Although he published short stories and several novels in the teens, he
achieved critical and popular success with Main
Street (1920), which satirized Midwestern provincialism. On a 1921
lecture tour, he regularly praised Cather’s work. He continued with a string
of popular and critical successes, including Babbitt
(1922), Arrowsmith (1925) (for which he declined the
Pulitzer Prize for fiction), Mantrap (1926), and Elmer Gantry (1927). Even though he depicted One of Ours (1922) as a failure in his New York Evening Post review, Cather invited him to
tea and said she was not “a particle sore at him” (#0624). Although they
infrequently saw each other in person, they remained on good terms, and when
Lewis was the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature,
he praised Cather in his acceptance speech. Lewis was married and divorced
twice, first to Grace Livingston Hegger and then to Dorothy Thompson. Later,
he lived with Rosemary Marcella Powers, whom Cather met. Lewis’s later
career was marred by his alcoholism, which led to his death in Rome,
Italy.
Place Annotations
Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith
Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and
early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few
years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a
main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside
Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis
acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather
and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until
1940.
Work Annotations
One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather
April Twilights (1903) by Willa Cather
"Latest Works of Fiction," New York Times Book Review (September 10, 1922) by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
"A Hamlet of the Plains," New York Evening Post (September 16, 1922) by Sinclair Lewis
